


Cheaters Never Prosper

by Blanca_Angelic_Loveless



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Episode Fix-It: s02e13 Mizumono, Gen, I dont know how bullet wounds work, M/M, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, and i don't care, just leave it alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 06:28:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5857669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blanca_Angelic_Loveless/pseuds/Blanca_Angelic_Loveless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But apparently serial killing cannibals do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cheaters Never Prosper

**Author's Note:**

> **_Please comment and tell me how I did!!_ **

Dr. Lecter’s home only held three victims that horrible night. Only three people Hannibal Lecter tried to kill. Alana Bloom, on the front porch with her skull cracked and her hip shattered. Jack Crawford, in the pantry with a shard of glass an inch-and-half deep in his neck. Will Graham, on the kitchen floor gutted, and though none could see heartbroken. 

There was no one else, but in the few minutes-few hours? Before Hannibal was gone and the paramedics arrive, Will watched the Ravenstag as it lay dying, saw the blood he knew wasn't real rush up to drowned him.

He saws Abigail- Abigail!- smiling sadly down at him and he thought he must be dead, and this must have been heaven. God had forgiven him, and given him Abigail. She'd told him something he couldn't quite make out through the veil of death, not yet on her side, not yet in heaven, before the blood of the beast washed over him and he succumbs to the end.

And then he didn't die, even though he was so, so ready.

Eight, almost nine months later, when Hannibal Lecter was put on trial for his monstrously numerous crimes, he answer no questions about Abigail Hobbs, other than to say “There is no place for Abigail in the world Will Graham has chosen to create. She had to be removed and so she was. There would be nothing to gain from desecrating her, and even then, there is nothing for you to find.”

And Will spends three years with the undeniably knowledge that Abigail was dead because of his mistakes. He played a game he couldn't win- or rather a game he could've won if he hadn't cheated, and she paid the price.

He thinks a lot about the night he almost died and he never tells, but he starts to believe in God. Just a little, because what else must that have been, but God sending him an Angel? Or maybe sending him a _message_ through Abigail, the one he’d missed. She must have been telling him to stay alive and kill Hannibal, avenge her, give her justice.

 _Give Abigail justice_ is what Will is thinking three years later on the edge of a cliff. With his head on Hannibal's shoulder, and the blood of Dolarhyde covering them both he started to tilt them to the side. Kill Hannibal for killing Abigail, kill himself for being Hannibal's reason. _For Abigail. And then everything's done._

“Ah, No-” Hannibal say, pulling them the other way, jerking them to the ground, solid and safe. “Not quite yet.”

 _“No...”_ Will cries into Hannibal’s shirt, clinging to him still like a helpless child. 

“While I appreciate your enthusiasm for blood shed my-” Hannibal coughs, and Will is reminded jar ingle that he’s been shot. “My darling boy, there is something I must show you first. Kill me- kill me after if you must.”

Hannibal and Will pull themselves- pull each other- to their feet, and Hannibal walks them toward the house. Will follows obediently.

Dolarhyde’s camera is moved, turned to face the patio, perfectly positioned to capture Will and Hannibal’s dance with the Dragon. Hannibal hums beside Will, a faint little laugh that give Will the impressuon he finds thw camera's movement amussing somehow as they walk through the missing window past the camera.

Then she’s there, stepping around the corner out of the hallway with the same sad smile he remembers so well.

Will’s words fail him even though he's trying to speak. His legs fail him too when he tries to move to her.

“There is nothing for you to find.” Hannibal had said. Not “there is nothing _left_ for you to find”. There was nothing to find because she wasn't dead. She wasn't buried. She wasn't _eaten._ Hannibal hadn't killed Abigail. _He hadn't killed Abigail!_ He’d removed her from the playing field, he'd kept her _safe._

She looks so different and still exactly the same. He does the math quickly and realises she's twenty-one already, almost twenty-two. Her hair is cut short, right above her shoulders in a style oddly reminiscent of Alana's, and she looks so grown up now, standing tall with no scarf around her neck, with her missing ear exposed by the clips holding her hair back, no shame for her scars. Will thinks she might even have grown an inch or two.

There's a hand on his back suddenly, nudging him forwards and Will almost trips over himself as he finally reaches to embraces her, whole and alive and soft in his arms. She's hugging him back tightly and Will doesn't know if it's him or her that's sobbing but he doesn't care because here’s Abigail, his sweet Abigail.

“I wanted to surprise you then, all those years ago. But then you- you called the house and I thought it best if I delayed your reunion, I did not -Didn't mean it to take so long-” Hannibal stammered out, age and his wounds not mixing well.

“It's okay, Hannibal.” Will sobs into Abigail's hair, taking one more deep breath before pulling away. “God I've got so many questions- have you been _here _this entire time?”__

“Yeah.” Abigail laughs. “Well no, I went to Italy with Hannibal and Bedelia, but when he found out Mason was coming after him, he sent me back here again. I did spend last summer in Lithuanian with Chiyoh, too..”

“I was that close to you...” Will's voice is almost inaudible. “In Italy.”

Yeah, we actually kind of planned to leave Italy and Bedelia when you found us. We thought you’d be quicker.” Abigail laughs again through tears.

“And you couldn't giver her back during the trial? When they asked you what you'd done to her?” Will turns on Hannibal.

“No. There was-” Hannibal starts to say, leaning heavily on the piano as the effects of the bullet in his gut start to take hold, and both Will and Abigail part from each other to help him across the room to the couch.

“There was no place for her in the world you created Will.” Hannibal starts again as Abigail runs to fetch the supplies to remove the bullet. “That was not a lie. I had to wait for you to recreate yourself and your world, and here you have. And here she is.”

Abigail returns and kneels before Hannibal, next to Will on the blood stained floor. She hands him a wet rag, and says sarcastically “I think you'll live, but you should probably clean your face.”

“And to be entirely honest-’” Hannibal continues.

“Oh, you know how to do that now?” Will can't help but interupt.

Abigail snorts.

Hannibal gives him a very Done sort of look before continuing “I also kept her from you because I wanted to see if your love for me could be genuine, not an unfortunate condition in keeping her.”

Will responded with a quiet "it's genuine..." as he watches Abigail work quickly and precisely in removing the bullet and he wonders where she learned it. Certainly not from Hannibal whole he was incaserated, but certainly _for_ Hannibal.

“Why were you were both so willing to wait for me? Why didn't either of you give up?” Will asks, still perhaps in denial that anyone could want something as monstrous as him. Even a monster and… he supposed Abigail might be a monster herself now too.

“Because you're family.” Abigail says without missing a beat “And as far apart as we’ve been, each of us from the others, you could no more leave without us then we could without you. Not permanently.”

“I did leave…” Will says guiltily. “I got married.”

“You married a woman with a kids, you were just trying to fill a void. I mean, I'm sure they were nice people, perfectly normal and everything you thought you wanted, but you were just trying to find us. A rose-tinted version of what we would've been if you'd just done what you were suppose to.” Abigail says, finishing the last stitch in the front of Hannibal’s abdomen, and helping him turn over to stitch up the entry wound..

“You grew up.” Will says mournfully as he listens to the way Abigail psychoanalysis him.

“We're going to have to burn the house down, Abigail.” Hannibal says suddenly, eyes closed and voice tired as he settles on the couch.

Abigail stops mid stitch, needle poking through hannibal's back. “What? No! You are _not_ burning my house to the ground!”

“Unless Abigail Hobbs is making a miraculous return from the grave, I think we are… Will reason with your child, she's … being immature.” Hannibal’s voice drifts, and Will laughs.

“Listen to your father and burn the house down, young lady” Will jokes, and regrets it with his smile pulls the gash on his cheek, no more adrenaline to number the pain.

“Sit still” Abigail chides Hannibal when he shifts just a little. And as Hannibal obeys Will watches Abigail’s grown face concentrated to completely on it’s task. He thinks about how he could have had all of this so much sooner if he'd just been honest with himself.

He pictures this same scene of the three of them now, only in Italy. He and Hannibal would have bitten off more than they could chew- Will would make that joke and Abigail would laugh- and she would rush to stitch them up, making them stand in the kitchen else they ruin the pristine furniture of their upscale flat. Dinner that night would have been something of Abigail's creation. There would'nt have been anyone in it, but none of them would have protested if there were.

"I'mean not kidding though, if we're burning my house down, I'm picking the new one where ever we end up." Abigail says stubbornly

Hannibal has passed out on the couch, Wethere from blood loss, or pain, or exhaustion, Will doesn't know, but seeing as Abigail doesn't panic, he assumes it's the latter, and elected to let the pretentious baster sleep on the couch tonight. It's the least he deserves.

"I'm fine with that." Will concedes.

He could have had all of this so much sooner if he's just played fair, but he had it now and he wasn't going to cheat them, or himself, again.

**Author's Note:**

> **_Please comment and tell me how I did!!_ **


End file.
